


Red-Blooded American

by peoriapeoria



Series: Fitter of the Species [6]
Category: Captain America (Movies), The Avengers (Marvel Movies), The Avengers (Marvel) - All Media Types
Genre: AU, Amazon Steve Rogers, Body Image, F/M, Gender, Gender or Sex Swap, Internalized Homophobia, Other, POV Tony Stark
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-07-25
Updated: 2013-07-25
Packaged: 2017-12-21 07:46:25
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 579
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/897730
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/peoriapeoria/pseuds/peoriapeoria
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Tony and Steve talk about life going on after the big sleep.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Red-Blooded American

"You should ask him out." Tony thought Steve needed to ask Bruce in, but he did have restraint and interpersonal sense; most people didn't warrant either. As it was, their Captain blustered.

Over the years, the secret of Steve Rogers' transformation into Captain America had been, obscured. When SHIELD had found the plane, when they had seen the star blazoned shield, they'd first thought they'd be able to learn the secret and lay to rest America's favorite son. They'd been surprised in turns by the Captain being a woman and alive.

Tony had the pictures of Steve before the Serum. The Charles Atlas 'before' picture in the back of comic books was a picture of health and vigor in comparison. SHIELD thought Captain Steve Rogers was a bit of creative wallpapering. That the serum had taken a scrappy man and made a brick shithouse avenging angel- seventy years or close enough had eroded that memory, even more surely than the movies and comics had made America's Amazon a matinee idol.

"Fools rushing in where our Angel fleetly tread." Dugan had been a grizzled bear of a man when Tony was a boy balancing in his hand. The remaining Rogers' Raiders, the Howlers, had only known Steve thus. Apparently male appellations for 'best girls' was a thing back then and Sergeant James Buchanan Barnes was even more lost than his best friend, having fallen from a moving train. How he'd taken it, seeing Steve transformed...

He'd have to ask Steve. "You certainly can, don't have to wait for a leap year." Tony was a genius, and he had an AI. He'd taken a crash course on the bad old days, along with the thermonuclear astrophysics. "Not that you taking up with a woman wouldn't bankrupt Pfizer."

"Of all the things medicine could be doing--"

"Pursuing happiness. Right there in the Constitution. Which, you should." He decided to skip the safer sex talk, or Capsicle wouldn't defrost this century. "I do know." Tony hadn't blown out his ears, he played his music so loud because his hearing protection was that good. He repeated himself when Steve turned. "Doesn't change how you've been looking at him."

Steve deflated like, yeah Tony wasn't finishing that thought. He should put an intellectual rights lawyer on that, make sure someone wasn't making unlicensed toys. "Howard told me."

"Does anyone--"

"Peggy's the last one alive. She married a cryptographer."

"Good."

Tony didn't mention that Peggy wasn't getting younger; she could call or text Steve too.

"I can't."

Silver dollars rained on Tony, metaphorically. Steve wasn't homophobic, but he'd certainly internalized something in the bad old days. "What would you have done if you hadn't crashed the plane?"

"Kept fighting the war."

"After the war."

"There's always another war. The one that killed my father was supposed to end them. It just lit a very slow fuse."

Mustard gas was a horrible thing. Howard had dug, Steve's records were a mess from the multiple enlistment attempts, either there hadn't been time before or Erskine's notes were a mess, but unlike the comic books Joseph Rogers had come back from the front a shattered man, married a nurse and sired Steve. There was a picture of the 107th at the docks on the way out. Boys that would never be men and already were, that would have been old men at forty.

And never is a weapon invented and not used. "All the more reason to wage peace."


End file.
